From L.A., a reinvention of Big Labor

A 'blue-green alliance' of workers, environmentalists, and others offers one model for union revival, analysts say.

from the April 10, 2007 edition

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Analysts note that the city is a major entry point for immigrants, legal and otherwise, who tend to work at low-wage jobs in numbers large enough to have some collective impact. It has active environmental and religious communities, which are increasingly taking up the causes of the poor. Moreover, they say, an exodus by much of the middle class leaves a city in which the contrast between Hollywood's megarich and South Central's slipping poor is acute and, to many, disturbing.

The Los Angeles area has seen a number of labor victories over the past several years, observers note.

• Between 50 and 70 percent of those who work in building services (janitors and security personnel) are unionized, compared with zero union presence and minimum wages of a few years ago.

• Hotel workers now have more than 30,000 union members, compared with almost none two years ago. Home-care and healthcare workers now count 80,000 union members.

• Three years ago, supermarket workers held out for months against three national food chains in one of the costliest strikes ever in the US.

Union and antipoverty activists, too, were behind the city's adoption of a "living wage" law in 1997 – one of the first in the nation. Labor activists also worked with city officials to push through a new idea called community benefit agreements, in which hotels, factories, retail complexes, and housing developers that get city contracts agree to a host of conditions that benefit local workers.

Not everyone is cheering the nascent rise of union organizing in L.A. – or even acknowledging that it will amount to much in the end. Some warn that aggressive labor organizing is creating an unsettling climate for businesses, and may even discourage new businesses from locating here.

Others suggest the new movement may have inherent limitations on expansion, because there are only so many industries that rely on an abundance of low-wage workers. The local economy, they note, is already becoming more fragmented, with smaller companies whose workers are harder to unionize.

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